tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Dec 04 08:49:51 1997

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Re: Noun-noun with {'e'}



>Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 17:55:18 -0800 (PST)
>From: Alan Anderson <[email protected]>
>
>Oh dear, I just had an epiphany.  I hate it when that happens!
>
>Sustel had written:
>>qatlh Duj chIjtaH ghaHvaD net qawmoH
>
>I was trying to decide how *I'd* express something like this in Klingon.
>After I chose a simpler sentence, "I remember why I dislike it," I played
>with the phrasing for a while.  Suddenly I came up with this:
>
>  vIpar 'e' meq vIqaw.
>  "I dislike it.  I remember (the previous sentence)'s reason."
>
>Can someone tell me why I shouldn't use {'e'} as the first noun of a pair
>of nouns in this way?  This is scaring me; the longer I look at it, the
>more I think it works.  I'm not going to run with it just yet; I'll wait
>for somebody to point out the obvious reason for it's being wrong. :-)
>The week is not yet finished, and I really didn't want to get into a big
>debate over yet another topic at the frontier of Klingon grammar...

Because "'e'" can only be the OBJECT of a sentence, not the possessor of
the object.

~mark


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